Top Dog

Masters Need To Let Their Pets Know Who's In Charge When Obedience Training

June 26, 1994|By Catherine Keefe, Orange County Register.

If you're the average dog owner these days, your pet spends more time with you inside the house than out in the yard.

Chances are, with such a personal relationship, some obedience training is essential. But finding the right trainer can be a big chore.

Brochures in the veterinarian's office or pet store, magazine ads and city recreation department bulletins all offer dog-training classes.

Shelves in bookstores' pet sections are packed with dog-discipline books.

But which technique is right for you and your dog?

A training guide

Although trainers use different methods, most agree on this: A dog instinctively considers itself part of a pack (your family), and it's up to you to establish the dog's place in the hierarchy (at the bottom).

You've got to be top dog in the house-the alpha dog, as the leader is known in wild dog packs. Otherwise, your pet will continuously challenge you.

The sooner you cement your place as leader of the pack, the better. Teaching a dog to be submissive is physically easier when the animal is a puppy-small enough to be handled and controlled.

How to do it? From the minute you bring a new dog into your home, touch it constantly, all over its body. Play with its toes and ears, look into its mouth.

Roll your dog onto its back and hold it there for 15 to 20 seconds, until it stops struggling and looks away.

Teach your dog to sit immediately. Never let it go out of a door before you. The alpha dog starts the hunt and goes through all the narrow openings first. You be the leader.

Going into training with a dog that acknowledges you as alpha is a lot easier than trying to train a dog that is still challenging your authority.

Choosing a trainer

Dog trainers all have the same goal: to get your dog to respond to your commands.

But training methods differ in a basic psychological way.

One theory is that a dog will discontinue any behavior that earns punishment. Trainers who work under this philosophy use choke collars to make corrections and verbal praise to reward proper behavior.

The other theory holds that any behavior that is rewarded will be repeated. These types of trainers believe in enticing an animal to perform in hopes of earning a tangible reward-food.

Many trainers fit their techniques somewhere in the middle, using food rewards and corrections.

Choose the method that will be easiest for you to carry out. Ask your veterinarian or other pet owners for referrals and observe classes.

Different approaches

Paul Thurner, owner of Dog Services and a trainer in Orange County, Calif., for 30 years, is an example of a user of the traditional, choke-chain approach.

"Our method is tried and true, and the other ones aren't," Thurner said. "If the alternative methods worked, they'd take over. I invite you to come watch a class and then decide if we're being cruel."

Thurner's recent Saturday morning obedience class had a showing of 14 dogs ranging from a miniature dachshund to a Rhodesian Ridgeback.

Most of the dogs were the picture of obedience, sitting quietly at their owners' feet, heeling properly, practicing sit-stays for up to three minutes.

There were a few renegades. Rita Seretti had trouble keeping Marty, a 5-month-old Australian shepherd mix, from jumping on her as she walked around to his side.

Thurner intervened, showing her how to correct with a quick jerk on Marty's collar. By the end of the class, Marty and Seretti were performing perfectly.

It was a different scene on a Tuesday night at Connie Jankowski's puppy kindergarten class.

Jankowski, editor of Dogs USA magazine and senior editor of Dog Fancy, has taught puppy kindergarten and dog obedience classes for 15 years.

She believes in positive reinforcement using food treats to get dogs to perform.

The puppies, sensing that their owners were harboring treats like chopped Cheddar cheese and beef jerky in their closed hands, were intent on their owners' every move.

Yelping, occasionally jumping and snuffling on the ground was de rigueur for the puppies.

Lively as the group was, the puppies all responded with enthusiasm to commands such as come, stay and heel.

Dog training can be as inexpensive as a book.

Some of the best are "The Art of Raising a Puppy," by The Monks of New Skete (Little, Brown & Co., $17.95); "People, Pooches & Problems," by Job Michael Evans (Howell Bookhouse, Inc., $19.95); and "Play Training," by Patricia Gail Burnham (St. Martin's Press, Inc., $7.95).